Authors: Patrick Gale
Alison had not ridden a bicycle in years and was slightly wobbly as they set out, Miriam and Francis resplendent on their new tandem in front, the Boys bringing up the rear and talking quietly, the two dogs bounding along beside them. She was on a nasty, small-wheeled thing designed for undemanding shopping and felt that her feet were having to churn the pedals faster than anyone else’s. It was a beautiful day, however, the colours intense after recent rain. The towpath had been widened and carefully gravelled by a young offenders programme to provide a more convenient cycle track. The canal waters seemed devoid of life, poisoned by rainbow seepages from weekend pleasure boats. There was a charm in the sunlight glancing off the murky water, however, and in pursing an activity for all the world as any other happy family, past camel-coated and wax-jacketed dog-walkers offering self-conscious season’s greetings, Alison began to find the whole thing funny.
‘We look like people in an ad for yoghurt,’ she shouted to Jamie.
‘Tampons, more like,’ he gasped back.
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘Press-on towels with wings and a uniquely formulated stay-dry lining.’
‘Children, really!’ Miriam shouted playfully, and Alison thought it sad that her mother had become the kind of woman for whom the very mention of feminine hygiene constituted daring.
The unwonted exercise gave her a kind of euphoria and when Sam flew past and began to race Francis, despite Miriam’s protests from the rear of the tandem that they would exhaust the dogs, never mind her, Alison was surprised to find she was enjoying herself. They passed, whooping, under a red brick bridge and she turned back to share with Jamie her happy realisation that they might be about to get through a whole family Christmas without having to eat Brussels sprouts.
Jamie had stopped, though. He was breathless, the colour drained from his face.
‘Jamie!’ she shouted and swung clumsily back to him. ‘What’s wrong?’
He wiped his temples and forehead with a spotted handkerchief. They were beaded with sweat and his voice sounded high and strained.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I should never have stopped going to the gym. I’m so unfit.’
‘But I thought you’d been biking to work each day.’ Sam had ridden back to them. Miriam and Francis waited some twenty yards ahead, chatting, assuming a chain had come off.
‘Only as far as the tube and I stopped that when it started getting too wet,’ Jamie told her.
‘What’s up?’ Sam asked, then saw Jamie’s face and turned to Alison.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘He’s just worn out. I reckon it’s ‘flu coming on or something. There’s a lot about. We’ll go back so he can lie down. You go on with the others.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, feeling excluded.
‘Honestly,’ Jamie managed. ‘Please. Take them on while we –’ He paused for breath. ‘It’ll be easier without her fussing. Honestly.’
He turned back without waiting for her reply, as if faintly ashamed. He stood on his pedal, painfully forcing the wheels to turn again, and started back for the house. Sam threw her a look she could not read and set off alongside him. She clunked her bike around again and rode back to Francis and Miriam.
‘Jamie doesn’t feel too good,’ she said. ‘It looks like a nasty ‘flu. They’ll meet us back at the house later.’
‘Probably overdid the cognac last night, more like,’ Francis said. ‘Remember how he passed out.’
‘Oh shut up,’ Miriam snapped and made the tandem lunge forward so that he barked a shin on a pedal.
They rode on to the pub and ordered lunch, but the brief illusion of family harmony had evaporated. Alison picked at her food, appetite dwindling in the over-rich steam rising off gravy and roast parsnips. Try as she might, she could not rid herself of her feeling of dread at the sight of Jamie’s ill-concealed weakness. The memory of the Boys riding slowly back to the house haunted her-Sam’s hand pushing with tender force at the small of Jamie’s drooping back. Nobody ordered pudding and they left before finishing their coffees.
Francis strode off to his study as soon as they arrived home, muttering about a late report. Alison and Miriam walked upstairs, each trying to pretend to the other that they weren’t hurrying. Miriam even went through the motions of slipping into her room on the way to hang up her jacket. Jamie was still dressed, flat out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. His breathing was laboured and his eyes shone with fever. Sam came through from the bathroom with a damp flannel to wipe his face.
‘He’s definitely going down with something,’ he said.
‘Poor Angel,’ said Miriam, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘And at Christmas too.’
Alison reached through them to touch Jamie’s forehead.
‘Shit,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re on fire!’
‘I’ll get the thermometer,’ Miriam said. ‘Get into bed properly, Jamie. I’ll bring up a tray. You’ll need lots of cold fluids. I’ll whizz up some nice lemonade in the blender.’
Alison gave up any pretence.
‘Sam, you’ll have to drive him to hospital.’
‘What?’ Miriam was incredulous. ‘For ‘flu?’
‘It’ll pass if we wait,’ Sam said. ‘He was as hot as this last night and this morning he was fine again. It comes and goes.’
‘Sam, he needs to be in hospital. Look at him. Don’t kid yourself.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Jamie murmured. ‘Honestly.’ His face was awash with sweat again, darkening his hair where it ran off his brow. He began to wheeze, then couldn’t stop as he tried to sit up.
‘Do you know where to go?’ Alison asked.
Sam nodded.
‘Same place as we’ve been for the tests,’ he said.
‘Yes, but you’ll need to go straight to the fifth floor. Say he’s been coming to the clinic for check-ups, then they can bring up his notes from downstairs.’
‘I’m sure this isn’t necessary,’ Miriam said as Sam half-rolled, half-tugged Jamie back onto his feet. Jamie’s knees buckled like a drunkard’s.
‘Listen,’ Alison told her. ‘He’s really sick. He needs oxygen. He needs drugs. They can put him on a Septrin drip. I think that’s what they do. Sam, I’ll call the ward for you and let them know you’re on your way. They can have everything ready for him.’
Sam mumbled assent over his shoulder as he helped Jamie downstairs.
‘Since when did
you
know so much about medicine?’ Miriam asked, following them.
‘Since I started telling adults the revised facts of life over the fucking phone,’ Alison hissed, snatching up the landing telephone. ‘Shit. Damn!’ She slammed it down as she realised she had forgotten the all-important number. She tugged out her wallet and, hands shaking, fumbled a mess of notes, cards and receipts onto the highly polished table top and started scrabbling through them. Jamie’s car revved up and pulled swiftly away, spitting gravel. She found the switchboard card of emergency numbers and punched out the one for the ward’s direct line. After an intolerable wait, she got through. She could hear Motown carols in the background,
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
. The nurse was laughing as she picked up the receiver. The ward was evidently mid-way through a late Christmas lunch.
Miriam had slumped to the top step, a hand on the banisters, by the time Alison hung up.
‘How long have you known?’ she asked, quietly now.
‘There’s nothing to know. We don’t know anything.’
‘How long have you known he was sick?’
‘He isn’t. I mean. He wasn’t. Not till now.’ Her mother turned to look at her, her old-young face lined with new care, full of wet-eyed reproach.
‘We didn’t tell you because Jamie didn’t want you to worry,’ Alison explained.
‘Ha!’
‘Not before you needed to. Oh God.’ Alison felt herself beginning to cry. ‘He’s got sick so
fast
, Mum! He should have had six years. More even. Some people don’t have any symptoms for fifteen. Of course, we don’t know when he got infected.’
‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sniffed heavily, controlled her breathing, blew her nose. ‘I couldn’t tell you. It was up to him. He’ll probably be pissed off as hell that you found out. Oh Mum. I’m so sorry.’ Why was she apologising?
Miriam lurched suddenly on to her feet before Alison could hug her. She hurried downstairs, snatching up a coat in the hall. Her tone was brusque, as though she were late for a meeting and would brook no distractions from her purpose. The dogs bounded about her, expecting another walk and she had to shout over their barking.
‘Frank, Jamie’s had to go to hospital,’ she called out. ‘Francis!’
‘What? Why?’ Francis emerged bewildered from the study. It had been insensitivity, Alison realised, not tact, that sent him in there. The entire crisis had brewed up and broken around him, she realised now, without his even sensing it. Scornful, Miriam made no attempt to explain.
‘I’m taking the Jag. The Merc needs petrol and we don’t have time to faff about.’
‘Wait. I’ll come too. I’ll drive you in.’
‘No, you stay here,’ she said. ‘Dad was going to ring from Marrakech. For fuck’s sake don’t say a thing.’
‘Well I have to say something.’
‘Wish him merry Christmas and tell him we’re having a lovely time,’ she said, impatiently. ‘But that we’re all out on a long walk and I’ll call him when we get back. Take his number at the villa. I’ve lost it. I’ll call you from the hospital when we know something. Keys.’ She held out her hand. He passed her the precious bundle with infuriating hesitancy and she snatched them. ‘Come on, Angel.’
She drove them into town in silence, hands tight on the wheel, mouthing curses at every source of delay. Alison couldn’t tell if Miriam was angry or frightened. She had not been so aware of her mother in years. The woman’s presence seemed to envelop her, the force of her emotions clamorous.
The hospital’s top floor was designed so that mysterious or highly infectious diseases could easily be isolated from the rest of the building. Even before the epidemic had been recognised as such, the administration had placed its AIDS cases there. As the epidemic swelled, the entire floor had been taken over. Rather than facing the humiliation and insomnia inflicted by an open ward, patients here had the privacy of individual rooms. Various charities and rich private donors – many on their deathbeds already-had paid for a stylish redecoration job, and supplied each room with a colour television and fridge. The corridors and sitting areas were now furnished with thickly cushioned sofas, so necessary for the chronically thin, and dotted with pretty potted ferns and palms. The few people sent to the floor with hepatitis B or contagious nasties picked up abroad now found themselves plunged into unexpected luxury, and would usually spend their first hours worrying that there had been some administrative error-that they had been booked onto a ward for paying patients and were already clocking up a bill.
Even without the physical differences, the fifth floor would have had an entirely different atmosphere from other hospital wards. Once the fierce realities of the syndrome became known in the nursing and medical profession, certain men and women, some but not all with a personal interest in the matter, stepped forward to dedicate themselves entirely to the new speciality which others were spurning in fear and disgust. As a result, nurses and doctors got to know patients intimately as they returned to the ward to fight off the successive infections and cancers to which they were now prey. Impersonal medicine was forced to socialize itself, relationships with patients became friendly, honest, even loving, and staff were obliged to unlearn all the rules of emotional boundary they had acquired in training and allow themselves to become involved. Now, when patients died, their carers demanded, and were granted, time to attend funerals, time to grieve.
Alison had been there plenty of times before; Jamie was far from being the first person she knew to fall sick. She noticed with fresh eyes, however, the differences in the ward from the grimmer parts of the building they had just passed through, and was grateful. There had indeed been a Christmas party. Those patients and visitors not sleeping off the effects of turkey and pudding were rowdily enjoying a broadcast of
The Sound of Music
in the day room.
The duty nurse led Alison and Miriam along a corridor hung with paper chains and glittering stars, still wearing his pink tissue paper crown from his lunchtime cracker. He confirmed Alison’s fears that Jamie had succumbed to PCP, a pneumonia rare until the AIDS virus made it one of its party turns. Hearing the news, she found herself clutching her mother’s hand, as much to remind herself this was truly happening as for any comfort the flesh and blood contact might give.
‘We’ve put him down at the end here,’ the nurse said. ‘Where it’s quiet. Don’t expect much reaction, what with the drugs and the fever. His temperature’s still sky high but we’re bringing it down gradually. Don’t worry,’ he added, seeing Alison’s expression. ‘This is one of the ones we can beat now.’ He held open the door. ‘I’ll be back in the day room if you need me.’
It was immediately noticeable that Jamie’s was the first room on the corridor not hung with Christmas cards and decorations.
‘Jesus,’ Miriam gasped involuntarily on seeing him. He was wired up to a drip on one side and plugged into a ventilator on the other; by no stretch of the imagination a ’flu patient. Publicly acknowledged, the virus seemed to have gained ground with rapacity. A black rubber lung on the machine puffed and concertinaed in ghastly parody of the geriatric breathing it was supporting. Sam was sitting up by the pillows, beside a translucent bladder that was feeding into Jamie’s sweaty body. He sprang up as they came in, face taut with nerves, and grasped both their hands with an odd formality, like a frightened husband welcoming midwives. Alison saw at once that he was one of those men in whom hospitals and sickness inspired a mortal terror.